Things We Change
by Kay the Cricketed
Summary: [Drabble, Hiro and Ando friendship]  Written after the episode five years in the future.  Hiro and Ando take a moment to rest, but one is plagued by other, deeper concerns.


_Things We Change_

by Kay

Disclaimer: Don't own Heroes. HEROES OWNS ME.

Notes: Written directly after the episode five years in the future. Hiro and Ando friendship, though you can see more if you really want to, I suppose. Heh. I know this has been proven obsolete after the continuation, so I suppose we can consider it an AU drabble?

* * *

They go to a cheap motel and Hiro sleeps in the bed while Ando slumps in a lumpy armchair with cigarette burns on it. Hiro had protested, but Ando waited him out until exhaustion won the battle for him. Now, Ando watches his friend sleep, breathing deep and even, chest raising and falling with the barest of movements under the smooth slide of the blue blanket.

He's thinking about the future.

At least there are some things that never change. He can match Hiro's peaceful face to the one he watched over in the future, much like this. It seems like an incredible string of déjà vu, some dream he hasn't woken up from. Hiro's glasses are on the bedside table; Ando picks them up and plays with them, opening and shutting the bands.

_'Not nearly as fun without you.'_ That's what Future Hiro had said.

Ando tries to imagine it. Five years alone, fighting as a "terrorist," the blade Hiro propped up against the mattress so casually becoming flaked with dried blood. The grim purpose in the blackness of his friend's eyes. The fall. The hope. The giant string construction painstakingly woven, every inch of it with hope, with burning need to right things again, with Ando being—

Ando does not like this future.

He sighs, puts the glasses in his lap, and rubs his face. Keeps his hands there, over his eyes and mouth, for a long time. Listens to his heart in his ears.

He can't _tell_ Hiro. He doesn't want to put that burden on his friend; he doesn't want to see Future Hiro start to emerge this soon. It would put that soft darkness back into Hiro's eyes, that hardness in the set of his jaw. Ando can't stand that. For all he gripes about Hiro's naivety, the loss might prove too difficult to bear. _'This is how we roll_,' Hiro had said, but he doesn't know—

And oh god, Ando doesn't want to die. He's got a lot of things he's never done. He can't think of many of them right now, but he knows they're there, thrumming under his skin like an itch now that he can't scratch. This should be impossible. It seems so long ago that life had been made up of office hours spent looking at half-naked women on the computer, of teasing Hiro in his cubicle, drinks after work and scoffing at the latest comic books Hiro would shove in his face. A month ago. A lifetime.

But he's never felt more alive than in this cheap motel with a time traveler and a sword and now he's going to _die_.

He can't tell Hiro. If they were supposed to know, Future Hiro would have told them. All Ando can do is hope now. Some of that stuff Hiro is always talking about. Believe in that for a while. That maybe, somehow, Hiro can actually do this, be the person this world and Ando need, this man that will stop an exploding human from destroying everything.

_'Without you,'_ Future Hiro had said. Nothing about the hundreds dead from the explosion. Only this.

Madness. For a second, he imagines their tiny shoe-box hotel room compressed into its own dimension where nothing can touch them, like Hiro's frozen time, only Ando can feel his clock ticking and his heart thudding and _he can't tell Hiro_ because there has to be something small still between them, some measure of normality. Hope. Not a blonde girl in sequins, but a quiet space where there's just Hiro dead to the world in bed and Ando watching over him, thinking that he's changed the future somehow already, changed his mind about everything.

Because even knowing his future, Ando can't bring himself to leave.

Hiro mumbles in his sleep. The sun falls over New York, sending the room into a dim and shadowed set of planes. And still Ando sits, thumb smoothing over the lens in Hiro's glasses, awake and waiting for the end.

* * *

_The End_


End file.
